Audio:

GRAMMAR TIP: a-şi dărui (unul altuia) is a reflexive reciprocal verb when used with the reflexive pronoun in plural: ne dăruim, vă dăruiţi, îşi dăruiesc (unul altuia) and means to give each other as a present. When used with the reflexive pronoun in singular: îmi dăruiesc, îţi dăruieşti, îşi dăruieşte it means to give onself as a present (e.g. Mi-am dăruit o carte. I gave myself a book as a present).

obiceiuri sunt Pluguşorul, Capra şi Ursul.

Audio: Revelionul şi Anul Nou

Videos

Sezonul sărbătorilor de iarnă se deschide însă o dată cu Moş Nicolae şi se termină pe 7 ianuarie cu sărbătoarea Sfântului Ioan Botezătorul.

***

Vezi şi:

• Moş Nicolae
• Revelionul şi Anul Nou

Audio:Sărbătorile de iarnă

Learn Romanian Magazine issue No. 2 / 2010 November – December

Download now!

Audio recordings are available for all the articles. Download the magazine and listen to the audios below.

This issue is dedicated to the winter holidays and the genuine traditional way the Romanians spend them.

Contents (8 pages):

• Sărbătorile de iarnă Sărbătorile de iarnă
  • Moş Nicolae Moş Nicolae
  • Crăciunul Crăciunul
  • Revelionul şi Anul Nou Revelionul şi Anul Nou
  • Boboteaza şi Sfântul Ioan Botezătorul Boboteaza
• 1 Decembrie – Ziua Naţională a României 1 Decembrie – Ziua Naţională a României
• Locuri din România: oraşul Cluj-Napoca Cluj-Napoca
• Mâncăruri tradiţionale româneşti: sarmalele Sarmalele
• Gramatică: Verbe şi construcţii reflexive (Reflexive verbs and phrases)
• Exerciţii, cuvinte încrucişate

Crăciun Fericit şi La Mulţi Ani 2011!

—

Football Romania Mousepad

The winter holidays season is going on, and many of you might be looking for a gift for your friends or your loved ones. The Learn-Romanian-Magazine.Net site has now a new page which present you some Romania related gift ideas.

If your girlfriend/boyfriend is Romanian, how about buying her/him a gift which would remind her/him of Romania? Check out some T-shirts, mugs or other gift ideas on the Romania Gifts page. Here are some sample products:

I Love Romania T-shirt

Made in Romania Coffee Mug

I love my Romanian Boyfriend

The products are provided by www.zazzle.com.

Take advantage of the on-going offers (like free shipping for orders over $50,00) and order your gifts in time for Christmas.

Happy Holidays!

Image © www.coloring-pages.org

În noaptea de 5 spre 6 decembrie vine Moş Nicolae.

Seara copii aşează la uşi sau la ferestre o pereche de ghete curăţate. În timpul nopţii Moş Nicolae aduce cadouri copiilor: fructe, dulciuri sau jucării. Conform tradiţiei, copiii care nu sunt cuminţi primesc şi o nuieluşă. De aceea, în unele regiuni, copiii lasă moşului un pic din mâncarea lor preferată ca să-i ierte.

În dimineaţa următoare copiii se bucură de cadourile primite.

Pe 6 decembrie sunt sărbătoriţi cei cu numele de Nicolae şi alte nume asemănătoare.

Saint Nicholas

During the night of 5th to 6th of December comes Saint Nicholas.

In the evening children place at the windows or doors a pair of clean boots. During the night Saint Nicholas brings presents to children: fruits, candies or toys. According to the tradition, the children not behaving well receive also a small twig. That is why, in some regions, the children leave for Saint Nicholas some of their favorite food, so that he will forgive them.

In the next morning, the children enjoy their presents.

On the 6th of December are celebrated all those called Nicolae and those with similar names.

Audio:

GRAMMAR TIP: se bucură = reflexive verb (see the grammar section in the 2nd issue of the magazine).

În 1 decembrie este Ziua Naţională a României. Această zi a fost adoptată ca zi naţională în data de 1 august 1990 în cinstea evenimentului din 1 decembrie 1918 de la Alba Iulia. În acea zi a avut loc Marea Unire, adică unirea Transilvaniei cu România. Acest eveniment istoric reprezintă unirea tuturor românilor într-un singur stat naţional.

Ziua de 1 decembrie este sărbătoare publică. În toate oraşele ţării sunt organizate parade militare, ceremonii de comemorare a eroilor ţării şi spectacole artistice. În timpul serii se organizează focuri de artificii.

92 years from the Great Unification of 1918

On December 1st is [celebrated] Romania’s National Day. This day was adopted as the national day on August 1st, 1990 in the honor of the event on December 1st 1918 in Alba Iulia. On that day took place the Great Unification, that is the union of Transylvania and Romania. This event represents the unification of all Romanians in a single national state.

December 1st is a public holiday. In all the cities are organized military parades, commemoration ceremonies for the country’s heroes and artistic performances. In the evening there are fireworks.

Ascultă:

GRAMMAR TIP: sunt organizate = se organizează – reflexive form with a passive / impersonal meaning (see the grammar section in the 2nd issue of the magazine).

În februarie 2010 Bon Jovi a început turneul “The Circle Tour” în timpul căruia va susţine 135 de concerte în 30 de ţări. Primul album al formaţiei intitulat “Bon Jovi” a apărut în 1984. Formaţia a publicat până acum 11 albume, ultimul fiind “The Circle” în 2009.

* * *

The rock band Bon Jovi will hold a concert in Romania next year. According to the band’s internet site bonjovi.com, the concert will take place on July 10th, 2011, in Bucharest, in the Constitution Square.

In 2010 Bon Jovi set out for “The Circle Tour” during which it will perform 135 concerts in 30 countries. The band’s first album called “Bon Jovi” was released in 1984. The band has released so far 11 albums, the last one being “The Circle” in 2009.

GRAMMAR TIP: future tense, 3rd person sg = va + infinitive (va concerta, va avea, va susţine) .

Românii nu au tradiţia Halloweenului. Cu toate acestea, în zilele noastre, această sărbătoare a fost importată din ţările vestice (probabil SUA) şi devine din ce în ce mai populară printre tineri. Aceştia organizează petreceri de Halloween la care oamenii se îmbracă în costume înfricoşătoare.

Romanians do not have the tradition of Halloween. However, nowadays, this celebration has been imported from the western countries (probably USA), and it is becoming more and more popular amongst the youngsters. They organize Halloween parties where people dress up in scary costumes.

La 1 noiembrie românii sărbătoresc Ziua Morţilor, care corespunde sărbătorii “All Saints Day” (“Ziua Tuturor Sfinţilor” în traducere) în culturile vestice. Oamenii merg la cimitir şi aprind lumânări pe mormintele celor decedaţi din familie sau dintre prieteni.

On November 1st Romanians celebrate “Ziua Morţilor” (“The Day of the Dead” in a free translation), corresponding to the “All Saints Day” in the western cultures. People visit the graveyards and light candles on the graves of the dead relatives or friends.

Un Halloween plăcut!

Have a nice Halloween!

GRAMMAR TIP: din ce în ce mai + adjective = more and more + adjective (din ce în ce mai populară = more and more popular).

Learn Romanian Magazine is a magazine targeted to those interested in learning and practicing the Romanian language. Its content will be based on articles related to Romania and Romanians life, culture and customs, as well as on interesting worldwide stories.

With a new issue every two months, the magazine content intends to provide the readers with a successful Romanian language learning experience.

Download now!

Main features of the magazine

• Texts structured on three difficulty levels: easy, intermediate, difficult
• Word explanations: some 40 to 50 words in each issue are explained with a Romanian equivalent and an English translation right next to the text they appear in
• A grammar section, where each issue will present and explain a new grammar topic
• Exercises related to the grammar topic and the articles
• Audio recordings for the articles, read by a native Romanian speaker, available on this site
• Part of the articles will be available as teasers on this site, with the full articles being available only in the printed / downloadable version
• The contents of each issue will be listed on the site. This will give you an idea about the coming magazine issue.

Contents of this issue: No. 1 / September – October 2006

• Castelul Peleş, un castel fascinant
• În septembrie începe şcoala
• Oracolul din Oberhausen
• Gramatică: pronumele personal în acuzativ şi dativ
• Exerciţii, cuvinte încrucişate

If you are serious about learning Romanian this magazine will help you improve your skills. When learning a foreign language it is very important to practice regularly, read often, listen to the way a native speaks it and exercise your oral skills. This magazine gives you the opportunity to do all that.

The first issue of the magazine is available for free (a pilot issue) to all the registered members as a pdf download: LRM-01.Sept-Oct.2010 (162). Just login and then come back to this page to download it. The magazine is also available in the Forum section under the Downloads and other stuff. If you have not registered yet, you can do it here.

Your feedback is very important to us, so please answer the poll below. Please also leave comments to this article or on the forum to tell us your opinion on this magazine. The future of the magazine depends very much on your feedback!

First of all, thanks everybody for your great feedback. I truly appreciate it and I will definitely take the actions to make your experience more enjoyable on this site. I have finally managed to install the forum, but I decided not to transfer any of the older users. So we are starting up with a fresh new forum section.

I strongly encourage you to register and take part in the discussions. For all registered users I am offering a free download: 10 pages of basic Romanian words and phrases. The download will be available as soon as you register and log in: Romanian Language - Basic Words and Phrases (92)

I wish you an enjoyable time on this site and good luck with your learning. Check back often for new articles!

Acest proiect este susţinut de Ministerul Mediului şi Pădurilor şi de voluntari de pe întreg teritoriul ţării. Acţiunea face parte dintr-o mişcare internaţională “Let’s do it, world!” începută în anul 2008 în Estonia. Acţiunea a continuat în anii următori şi în alte ţări precum Letonia, Lituania, Slovenia şi Portugalia. Acum este rândul României. Participă şi tu!

Let’s talk now about the features of this new site.

• Articles will be published on a regular basis on 3 difficulty levels: UŞOR (easy), MEDIU (medium) and DIFICIL (difficult). In each article, the words which are considered challenging for that level will be underlined and an explanation will be available on a mouse-over gesture. The explanation will be in Romanian, using basic words, synonyms, etc.
• Each article will have an audio recording available, where a genuine Romanian speaker will read it.
• The articles difficulty grade can be rated by the users (scale 1…10). This will be an important feedback for me, as I can tune the content to match the expected difficulty level of the users. For example, if a text marked as UŞOR (easy) would seem ok, the grade would be 5. If it is on the easy side, mark it under 5, it is a bit too difficult for an easy text, mark it 6-10.
• You can subscribe to the whole content through feeds, iTunes or email, and you get notified immediately when new articles are published.

Depending on the success of this new format, new features will be developed. I hope you’ll find this useful and will enjoy it, and I will be glad to get your feedback.

Pronosticurile date de caracatiţa Paul din Oberhausen (Germania) asupra rezultatelor  meciurilor de fotbal au fost 100% corecte. Caracatiţa a devenit celebră în toată lumea.

Cei mai fericiţi beneficiari ai pronosticurilor caracatiţei sunt spaniolii, campionii mondiali la fotbal. Mulţi dintre ei doresc ca Paul să se mute în ţara lor. Caracatiţa rămâne însă în acvariul său în Germania. S-a pensionat şi nu va mai da pronosticuri, deşi mulţi dintre vizitatorii săi ar dori să le prezică chiar numerele de la loto.

Oracolul din Oberhausen

În România în fiecare an, la mijlocul lui septembrie, începe un nou an şcolar. Aproximativ 500.000 de copii merg la grădiniţă, iar peste 200.000 de copii încep clasa întâi. În total, numărul elevilor din învăţământul primar, secundar şi liceal este de circa 2.700.000. În grădiniţe şi şcoli predau peste 250.000  de cadre didactice: educatori, învăţători şi profesori.

Anul şcolar are două semestre. Elevii vor fi în vacanţă în perioada Crăciunului şi a Anului Nou, între cele două semestre şi în perioada Paştilor. Anul şcolar se termină la mijlocul lui iunie.

in-septembrie-incepe-scoala

Toggle crossword puzzle or show the puzzle in a pop-up window.

Castelul Peleş - Sinaia

Călătorind pe Valea Prahovei între Bucureşti şi Braşov peisajul montan este fascinant. În mijlocul Munţilor Carpaţi, la o altitudine de o mie de metri, se află oraşul Sinaia, una dintre cele mai populare destinaţii turistice din România. Peste două sute de mii de turişti vizitează anual această staţiune.

Cea mai renumită atracţie turistică este cu siguranţă Castelul Peleş. Castelul a fost construit în timpul lui Carol I, rege al României, şi a fost inaugurat în anul 1883. La construirea sa, care a durat zece ani, în afară de români au participat lucrători din numeroase alte ţări ale Europei, printre care maghiari, germani, turci, greci, francezi, italieni, cehi şi polonezi.

Într-un clasament al celor mai spectaculoase castele publicat de opentravel.com Castelul Peleş s-a clasat pe locul al şaselea. Locul întâi a fost ocupat de Castelul Hohenzollern din Germania.

Alte atracţii turistice în Sinaia sunt telecabina (sau telefericul), care urcă la 1400 şi la 2000 de metri, Casa memorială George Enescu şi Mănăstirea Sinaia.

Castelul Peleş

Romanian is not a very popular language, but there are relatively many people speaking it.  Being the national language of Romania and Moldova, it is spoken by around 20 million of Romanians and by 2.5 million Moldavians. There are also large Romanian communities in Spain and Italy where Romanian is spoken by almost 1.5 million.

When approaching a new language, people try different methods: they by CD language packs, DVD programs or books and some enroll in a language course. All of them are surely also searching on the internet for any material which could help them, hoping to find the right ones.

About two years ago I started publishing a free Romanian language podcast on romanian-podcast.blogspot.com. I started the podcast as an experiment, but because of its popularity I continued posting new episodes. I was thrilled to receive positive feedback about the podcast content and format. During the last year I slowed down. People were asking for new episodes, so I started working on a new site concept with a more complex offering for the Romanian language students. This is how the Learn Romanian Magazine was born.

The concept of this magazine is still under development. This first issue is meant as a pilot, and the format might change according to the visitors’ response. The idea of the magazine is to offer texts on three language levels written in Romanian. The easy texts will be classified as   and will be targeted to beginners. For intermediate level the texts will be marked with . Advanced texts will be marked as difficult with . Words considered  necessary to be explained will be marked and an explanation will be available as a tooltip.

Selected texts will have available their audio version, as a continuation of the previous podcast. However, new podcast episodes will also be released in the same style as previously. The old podcast episodes are available in the Podcast section.

I would like to welcome you all to the Romanian Language Magazine. I wish you a pleasant journey to perfecting your Romanian language knowledge!

Florin,
Learn Romanian Magazine

The new episode in the Romanian Podcast series explains the usage of the verb to like – a plăcea. This episode is a bit longer than the previous ones.
Play the audio: audio (mp3) and read the transcripts (pdf).

Thank you everybody for the ideas and suggestions for future episodes.

Here is episode 17, where you will find some useful vocabulary describing an apartment.

And here are this episode’s files. Liste to the audio: the audio (mp3) and read the text file (pdf).

As promissed in the podcast, here is a link where you can find lots of traditional Romanian Christmas songs: http://www.crestinortodox.ro/colinde_audio.html

I am back now with episode number 15 where we talk about my weekly program. Find out what are the days of the week in Romanian language and how you can use them to express the time of different actions.

Play the audio: audio file (mp3) and read the transcript text file (pdf).

Play the audio: audio file (mp3) and read the transcript (pdf).

I have prepared for you an extra episode of the podcast series. You will hear a fragment from a theater play by Eugen Ionescu – “The Lesson” (“Lecţia” – in Romanian). The language is simple and clear, you will also find some words and phrases explained.

This episode has no transcript. Play the audio: audio (mp3)

You’ll learn how to tell the time in the literary language as well in spoken language. Listen to the audio: the audio (mp3) and read the text file (pdf).

Listen to the audio: audio file (mp3) and the text file (pdf). You can also subscribe via iTunes or other podcatchers.

I hope you will enjoy the lesson.

Listen to the audio: audio file (mp3) and read the transcript (pdf).

Good luck!

In this episode, George and Maria sit at a table in a café and order some coffee and tea. Learn the basics with this podcast about ordering and paying.

Play the audio: audio file (mp3) and read the text file (pdf), containing the full conversation and the vocabulary.

Enjoy the lesson!

Play the audio: audio (mp3) and read the text file.

It seems that the media files do not show up in iTunes, so I am republishing them again here. Play the audio: audio (mp3) and read the text file.

Play the audio: audio (mp3) and read the transcript (pdf).

Play the audio: audio (mp3) and read the transcript (pdf).

I hope you are progressing with your learning. Drop me a comment if you have any questions.

Play the audio: audio (mp3) and read the transcript (pdf).

I hope you enjoy it. And as usual, don’t hesitate to comment or give your ideas. I appreciate any feedback. And many thanks to those who commented.
Note: There was a typo in the title and the names of the files, the word “Forumule” should be “Formule”. I have corrected it, but those who have updated the podcast before my correction might still see it incorrectly.

Play the audio: audio (mp3) and read the transcript (pdf).

I hope you enjoy it. Don’t hesitate to comment or give your ideas. I appreciate any feedback.

Play the audio: audio (mp3) and read the transcript (pdf).

The first lesson (for week 1) will come soon. I hope you will enjoy it. Please write your comments, I will pay attention to each one of them.

I really hope you will find this very helpful. Good luck!

You can subscribe to the podcast (for example with iTunes or with Nokia N95 Podcast application) on this page: http://feeds.feedburner.com/romanian-podcast